New estimate in... ("fun with numbers" was just in time!)

Cost of shoring up U.S. banks may be in trillions
By Emily Kaiser
Thu Jan 29, 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The cost of restoring confidence in U.S. financial firms may reach $4 trillion if President Barack Obama moves ahead with a "bad bank" that buys up souring assets.
[emphasis added]

$4,000,000,000,000.
[Remember when I used to get upset about the $500Bn wasted in Iraq?]

$4,000,000,000,000 = 80,000,000 median-income households.
The Census Bureau reports about 116,000,000 households in 2007. 80K is about 70% of the total.
Perhaps it would be easier to simply identify those households in the 70th percentile & below and give 'em each $50,000 - to be used to make whole outstanding mortgage & credit card debt.
For those with no credit/mortgage problems to make whole - they just get to spend the money as they see fit!

Note 1: the 70th percentile of household incomes in 2007 was about $75,000. Sorry - under my plan, if your household income exceeded $75,000 you'd get no government largesse!

Note 2: Alternative plan - Let's argue (somewhat speciously) that the really po' folks don't have mortgage debt, and concentrate our efforts on the upper end of the income distribution.
95% of households made less than $177,000 in 2007.
That's 110,000,000 households.
We could give the richest 80,000 of those making less than $177K the $50K: if your household earns between $25K and $177K, you get $50,000 of government largesse - to help make whole any delinquent mortgage or credit card debt. Again, if you've no delinquent mortgage or credit card debt, you can do what you want with the $50K.

Note 3: 4,000,000,000,000 seconds = 126,839 years.
That's a very long time.
Modern humans (homo sapiens) have only been around for about 200,000 years.